Quicker Than a 3D Printer, Easier Than Baking a Cake, Powered by Your Vacuum Cleaner
This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.
This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.
This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.
Hello fellow makers! Hope you’re all doing well.
Once again, thank you all for your continued support and patience, you guys rock.
To The Factory!
Tooling Tooling is full steam ahead! This takes around 2 months to complete and involves very slowly and incredibly accurately hollowing out a huge lump of steel. So far, everything has been smooth sailing. Ben will be moving out to China in early November to oversee the first batch of units being produced - expect lots of pictures of the whole process. We’re aiming to get the first batch shipped out before the Chinese New Year in February. Mayku Mould Making Sheets After many adventures, we’ve now found a great supplier of sheet material to work with. Every FormBox will ship with 20 sheets of Mayku mould maker sheet and ten sheets of classic colour sheet.
Our sheets make incredible vacuum formed moulds. They’re flexible enough to remove objects, whilst rigid enough to hold their form well. They're transparent so you can see exactly how much you need to fill them up with your chosen medium, and super robust so they can be reused over and over. They’re also food safe so can be used to fulfil all of your culinary dreams!
A quick note on recycling Mayku mould making sheets: due to the food safe nature of the sheets, we can’t make them out of recycled plastic materials because this might contain impurities that would make them unfit for use with food. They will however be recyclable after you have used them multiple times! We take recycling very seriously at Mayku and will be working on how we can make some innovations in this space in the future.
Mayku Classic Colour Sheet
These sheets are perfect for your final creations. They have one gloss side and one matte side that you can choose between, depending on what you think will fit your creation best. They also hold a paint finish very well due to their incredibly smooth surface texture.
We’ve managed to custom make the Mayku classic sheets out of 50% recycled materials whilst keeping excellent forming properties. The more we up the amount of recycled content, the higher the chance of distortion and discontinuity in the quality of the sheets. However, we’ll be working closely with our supplier to create beautiful, innovative and new materials for our machines - and we’ll need your help... Once you get your machines, we’d love to hear any thoughts you have on how we could improve our materials and what you would like to see us do next!
Casting Materials
One of the coolest things about the Mayku FormBox is it’s ability to make moulds that you can use to cast your own beautiful creations. We’ve found a great supplier of plaster who we’re now working with to supply a wonderful white plaster to use with Mayku FormBox made moulds. We’ve also added an extra little present for you guys - a set of four vividly coloured pigments that you can use to dye the plaster into beautiful colours. You can also mix the tiniest amount of two pigments to make up your own colours of plaster (see the pic at the top of this page). We’ll need your help to experiment with these and don’t forget to share your findings with the rest of your fellow makers!
Packaging
The packaging and unboxing experience is key for us, as we want the beginning of your Mayku journey to be off to an extra special start. We are currently going through our third round of testing the unboxing experience, and it’s going really well. We are getting some fantastic feedback from the users!
Next Steps!
We’ve got another few busy months ahead of us, completing tooling, and some really exciting things to look forward to. We’ll detail our progress to you in the next update, so keep a keen eye on your inbox! Here’s a few things that we are looking at:
We are now building the inner box kits. These include starter projects, explain the fundamentals of vacuum forming and offer guidance on getting the most out of your Mayku FormBox.
We will also be collating all of the customs information and getting the documentation in order, so that everyone is clear on the process of shipping the Mayku FormBoxes around the world.
Once again, thank you for your support, patience and feedback. We cannot wait to get the Mayku FormBoxes into your hands and see what you create with them.
As always, feel free to fire away any questions you have to [email protected] and we’ll endeavour to answer you as quickly as we can. Or, if you’d prefer to chat with us personally, let us know and we’d be happy to jump on a call at anytime that suits you.
All the best,
Ben, Alex & The Mayku Team
Hello fellow makers! Hope this finds you well?
We’ve had another busy (but great) month here at Mayku HQ! Ben’s just come back from another successful trip to China with the latest mock-up receiving the all clear! (read on for more details). We’re now waiting on the final costing based on the recent updates, and we’re all set to proceed with tooling!
The timing of Chinese New Year could affect our production schedule somewhat, due to the month of January being a national holiday. However, we assure you that we are doing our utmost to expedite the tooling process as we know how eager you all are to start creating amazing things with your Mayku FormBox!
We promise to keep you posted on any movement, progression or changes as soon as they occur.
Thank you all for your continued support and patience, we quite literally couldn’t have done it without you!
Lastly, I want to thank all of you that completed our survey and had the time for an interview with us. It was incredible to hear all of the ideas and plans you have for the Mayku FormBox! Such diversity! It got us really excited about getting them into your hands, and we’re pumped to be able to bring you this tool to take your making in new directions. We really cannot wait!
Handles
We mentioned in the last update that we combined the new tray click and handle design into a single mechanism. Our team in China has been testing this relentlessly and we are very glad to be able to tell you that it is working beautifully! We have decided to use cast aluminium for the hinges which, is the slightly more expensive option, but is also the most reliable one.
Materials
We are 100% aware of the environmental damage of plastic waste, and wherever possible, we’d like to help reduce this. So, we’ve been doing our best searching for materials with the highest recycled content to include in your pack and to sell through the online store. The good news is that we have found a supply of a 90% recycled black plastic - which we will be putting through extensive testing over the next few weeks to see how well it works with the Mayku FormBox. All going smoothly we’ll include some sheets with your machine and continue to supply it through our online store.
Inner Box & Packaging
We’ve been incredibly lucky to work with Tom Robinson, an amazing designer. He’s been working closely with us on the inner and outer box packaging, which is coming along very nicely. We have decided to go for a lovely recycled paper pulp number!
Here’s a little teaser of Tom’s early ideas for what could be in the starter kit that’s included with your Mayku FormBox!
We’ve got another few busy months ahead of us and some really exciting things to look forward to. We’ll detail our progress to you in the next update, so keep a keen eye on your inbox! Here’s what’s on the agenda:
This month
October and November
Thank you once again for your support, patience and feedback. We cannot wait to get the Mayku FormBoxes into your hands and see what you create with them.
As always, feel free to fire away any questions you have to [email protected] and we’ll endeavour to answer you as quickly as we can. Or, if you’d prefer to chat with us personally, let us know and we’d be happy to jump on a call at anytime that suits you.
All the best,
Ben, Alex & The Mayku Team